Posted
by
Zonk
on Saturday April 22, 2006 @05:21AM
from the oh-yeah dept.

ezavada writes "Engadget reports that in a speech at Tuskegee University, President Bush claims that government research developed the iPod." From the article: "While we have to gratefully acknowledge the efforts of government agencies such as DARPA in some of the fields mentioned by the President, we also feel obligated to point out the accomplishments of private companies in the US and abroad, including IBM, Hitachi and Toshiba -- not to mention the Fraunhofer Institute, which developed the original MP3 codec ..."

Yes, and so did everyone else, the iPod isn't just one of those devices, the major inovation of the iPod is that you can look cool while telling someone about your MP3 player, rather than blend in with the geeks.

Now if your telling me the goverment invented a way to make geeky things non-geeky without having to pay $99 for a 'sock' which fits your iPod, now that's something I'd be interested in.

Based on his sense of humor, something tells me that this has about a 100% chance of being a joke, and I'm sure that the audience probably got a kick out of it. In fact, I bet if everyone here were there, and didn't hate GW, they would laugh too.

This is Slashdot. It is de rigeur that we criticize GWB early, often and continuously, even when it's patently obvious to anyone with more than a pea-brain that GWB was making a joke.

He didn't say that at all. According to the article, he said that the "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression" and goes on to say that while the government intendeed that for one (unspecified) purpose, that "it turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod".

Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.

Status: False.

Origins: Despite the derisive references that continue even today, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs were misleading, out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and perhaps self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development the technology that we now know as the Internet. To claim that Gore was seriously trying to take credit for the "invention" of the Internet is, frankly, just silly political posturing that arose out of a close presidential campaign. Gore never used the word "invent," and the words "create" and "invent" have distinctly different meanings -- the former is used in the sense of "to bring about" or "to bring into existence" while the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone's thinking up or implementing an idea. (To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean exactly the same thing, we have to ask why, then, the media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he "invented" the Internet, even though he never used that word, and transcripts of what he actually said were readily available.)

If President Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while President, "created" the Interstate Highway System, we would not have seen dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he "invented" the concept of highways or implying that he personally went out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway. Everyone would have understood that Ike meant he was a driving force behind the legislation that created the highway system, and this was the very same concept Al Gore was expressing about himself with his Internet statement.

Whether Gore's statement that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" is justified is a subject of debate. Any statement about the "creation" or "beginning" of the Internet is difficult to evaluate, because the Internet is not a homogenous entity (it's a collection of computers, networks, protocols, standards, and application programs), nor did it all spring into being at once (the components that comprise the Internet were developed in various places at different times and are continuously being modified, improved, and expanded). Despite a spirited defense of Gore's claim by Vint Cerf (often referred to as the "father of the Internet") in which he stated "that as a Senator and now as Vice President, Gore has made it a point to be as well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it," many of the components of today's Internet came into being well before Gore's first term in Congress began in 1977.

It is true, though, that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990s (although he did not, as is often claimed by others, coin the phrase himself) when few people outside academia or the computer/defense industries had heard of the Internet, and he sponsored the 1988 National High-Perf

"the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."

Mr B may not claim to have invented the iPod, he's pretty much clear on the fact the iPod exists only by his grace.

The sentence is nonsense. First he talks about one specific reason, then it changes to accidental "it turned out". Something is missing, Bush just read the speech wrong, or the speech was nonsense to start with.

According to the article, he said that the "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression"

BUSH said that?? He can't even pronounce "nuclear". The above probably came out as "the gubmint did work in 'puter stuff, and in electoral... elecat... elcatrikomystery stuff, and in siggy... what is this word...si... to hell with it, in nukular stuff."

Well, given Carter's background you would certainly have expected him to be able to pronounce "nuclear" correctly, so I'll give Bush a pass on this one.

And you're right... achieving the Presidency does require intelligence and ability in certain areas. Truly stupid people don't make it that far, and this constant impugning of the man's intellect is pointless. On the other hand, a high native intelligence and the capacity to exploit the political process up to the point of being elected does not, unfortu

The title of the article is incorrect; the US government didn't develop the iPod. It just helped fund the development of certain technologies at various research labs and universities that private corporations picked up and further developed on.

In other news early this morning, the US government helped develop Linux. More details come later.

From TFA: George W. Bush told his audience, "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."

The bold type is mine. I doubt that the single reason that things like signal compression were funded was because it was necessary to develop the iPod. It seems like these things could be more useful in military/computer/communications/etc. spheres than in personal entertainment.

Does this sound like a (bad) joke taken out of context to anybody else? Don't we have editors for this sort of thing?

Here is more of the quote:"
Here's another interesting example of where basic research can help change quality of life or provide practical applications for people. The government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the Ipod. I tune into the Ipod occasionally, you know? (Laughter.) Basic research to meet one set of objectives can lead to interesting ideas for our society. It helps us remain competitive. So the government should double the commitment to the most basic -- critical research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. I look forward to Congress to doubling that commitment."

I think that if you shove the word "but" in after your bolding, you'll get what he intended to say.

"The government funded research in these areas. They did so for one reason (probably military uses), but it turned out that these technologies were vital in the creation of the iPod and similar players."

I worked an internship at a computer lab in the UK during the '90 where we had PhD students trying to get voice compression to the next stage. As I recall a lot of that was based on American military voice compression research.Now the key point was trying to achieve "real-time" compression -- seeing a P90 taking 3-4 times real-time was seen as pretty good already.

Around the same time of course MP3 compression was also just getting off the ground, and the reference source code was more or less spread around

I thought we had editors too, but the submission of mine that made it on the front page seems to have been "edited" to make me look like a whiny bitch. Such is the way of Slashdot?1. Keep all sensationalist stuff in the front-page article2. "edit" out the relevant information in the actual submission3. Watch as hundreds of Slashdotters get mislead by editorial idiocy, fail to get a whole picture, and uselessly flame the article submitter4. laugh and profit at submitter's expense.

Well to take it to the logical extremes, the people elected the government who decided to fund these projects with their tax dollars.

Which means I indirectly contributed about a hundredth trillionth trillionth percent to the development of the iPod... which means based on iPod sales I'm owed about $400,000 in royalties, if my calculations are correct.

What he did say, according to the article, was: "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."

I don't think there's anything outrageous or untrue in there. And it's so short an excerpt that it's impossible to say what the overall tone of the speech was. Quite possibly this was taken out of context.

So an obviously partisan article and an inept Slashdot summary. Don't bother to read TFA.

Since this will obviously raise the spectre of the "Al Gore invented the internet" meme, I'd like to take the opportunity to remind people that Robert Kahn and Vincent Cerf (who arguably did invent the internet) have defended Gore's actual statement, with the observation that: "No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."

"The government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."

So he's only claiming the funding of research for ingredients that would eventually be used in the iPod. He's not claiming that they have developed the iPod. Sounds like press hype to me.

Bush had to have said this to get a laugh. If he pulled it off and got a laugh, I'm honestly surprised. Not because I don't think it is funny - it is. I'm just really surprised to hear something so witty from the man that gave us these gems:

As said above by several people, I think what he intended to say was that there was research done into these areas for one purpose (probably military uses), but later turned out that this research was vital in the design of the iPod.

Funny how much difference leaving out one minor clause of a sentence makes.

The man with the sig - "I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me." - doesn't see the humor in "Wow! Brazil is big"... I question your neutrality.

The government, or more specifically your tax dollars, have developed all kinds of stuff that gets comandeered by business. Good example: Celera. They took a whole shitload of taxpayer funded data in regards to cracking the human genome and built on top of it.

Celera needs to give some credit where credit is due as does Apple. As far as Apple being "innovative" I have been enjoying watching and recording video on my 80 Gig Archos PVR for well over a year now. Apple is only successful because they discover

he should have been bragging about helping develop the Creative Nomad and Jukebox players that were among the first HD based portable mp3 players- there are a few earlier players, as I'm sure I'll now be told, but the Nomad was one of the first really popular ones. Of course Pinnochio doesn't know the difference, and I suspect that history will see itself rewritten to show that the iPod was the first HD based mp3 player on the market, but Creative were there first.

Now, Apple did an astoundingly good Job(s) in taking the existing clunky models and making a sleek, user friendly player out of more-or-less existing technologies, but by no means were they the inventors of the portable mp3 player.

The US military could never have developed such advanced technology on its own. It's pretty obvious that the Ipod is alien technology planted by alien infiltrators. It's purpose? To damage our hearing so we won't hear when the full-scale invasion comes!

Well, it' good for rightwingers like Bush to acknowledge the importance of government funding of research; in their free market fervor, right wing ideologues often forget that there is something called a "public good" (that's a technical term--look it up before you comment).As for the iPod, Apple "invented" it in the sense of design and marketing. Almost all of Apple's underlying technology comes from elsewhere; Apple is "innovative" only in the sense of defining new product categories, not in terms of tec

This graphic explains what Bush is talking about. Many of the components in the iPod were made possible because of basic research funded by the federal government. Much of this basic research was done at government labs, universities, and within companies with funding from the Pentagon, Department of Energy's Office of Science, National Science Foundation, etc. Hosts of other individuals and companies developed that basic research into components, but the initial funding and reseach was supported by the U.S. government.

Smaller hard drives, codecs, file compression, etc. are build on the foundation of basic reseach - much of it made possible by initial U.S. funding.

Now, I'm not a fan of him. But this is a prime example of what happens when you rip a few words out of context and twist them long enough to make the speaker look silly. Same with Gore and his "invention of the internet". He never said that, his words were, if I remember right, that he had the foresight to fund what became the first "browser" and thus helped to give the "net to the masses".

Imagine what could've happened about 50 years ago when JFK was standing in Berlin, giving his impressive and memorable speech that had its climax in the immortal words "Ich bin ein Berliner". The whole text around it was, IIRC, "Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "Civis Romanus sum". Today the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner"."

In context, a speech to boost morale and faith in a town surrounded by communist GDR. Out of context, he pretty much said "I'm a donut".

No, that's not what the article says. It says that the government researched key technologies which made the creation iPod (among other things) possible. That's not the same thing as claiming that they developed the iPod, except for fools with an agenda to push.

In a private email message, Vint Cerf [washingtonpost.com] told me that it was true that Al Gore was instrumental in the development of the Internet. Before Mr. Gore's involvement, it was a semi-private utility known as ArpaNet and NSFNet. Mr. Gore championed the development of the private network as a public utility. This was years before Bill Gates, for example, recognized its importance.

The mis-interpretation of Gore's words came from a dishonest political
attack.

Anyone wanting to read more may be interested in a quote from
Wikipedia's History of the Internet [wikipedia.org]: "Funding for Mosaic [the first
browser] came from the High-Performance Computing and Communications
Initiative, a funding program initiated by then-Senator Al Gore's High
Performance Computing Act of 1991."

Here's a quote from one of Wikipedia's
articles [wikipedia.org] about Al Gore: 'His [Al Gore's] statement caused no
surprise at the time, and none of the journalists who covered it thought it
worth including in their stories. However, two days later, the Republican
Party began issuing press releases and statements denouncing Gore for claiming
to have "invented the Internet".'

Another Wikipedia
article about Gore [wikipedia.org] quotes Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf: "...as the two
people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make
the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our
knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."

Interesting fact: IMDB [imdb.com] says that the character Oliver in the movie "Love Story" was partly
based on Al Gore. Al Gore had been a roommate of Tommy Lee Jones, who appears
in the movie.

Here's part of a speech Al Gore entered into the Congressional Record in 1986, almost exactly 20 years ago. At the time, I remember running a BBS on a 2400bps modem-- I was probably one of the geekier people among the general population then-- but even then I think Gore probably had more vision on the topic than any geek I knew. I personally think it's pretty obvious how much the Gore Vice-Presidency must have advanced the state-of-the-art over what may have happened if, say, Quayle had remained Vice-President. I honestly think Slashdot exists in no small part because of Gore's vision...

[Note that text entered in the Congressional Record is supposed to be all-caps, but Slashdot disallows that, so it's in all lowercase.]

both of these amendments seek new information on critical problems of today. the computer network study act is designed to answer critical questions on the needs of computer telecommunications systems over the next 15 years. for example, what are the future requirements for computers in terms of quantity and quality of data transmission, data security, and softwear [SIC] compatibility? what equipment must be developed to take advantage of the high transmission rates offered by fiber optic systems?

both systems designed to handle the special needs of supercomputers and systems designed to meet the needs of smaller research computers will be evaluated. the emphasis is on research computers, but the users of all computers will benefit from this study. today, we can bank by computer, shop by computer, and send letters by computer. only a few companies and individuals use these services, but the number is growing and existing capabilities are limited.

in order to cope with the explosion of computer use in the country, we must look to new ways to advance the state-of-the-art in telecommunications -- new ways to increase the speed and quality of the data transmission. without these improvements, the telecommunication networks face data bottlenecks like those we face every day on our crowded highways.

the private sector is already aware of the need to evaluate and adopt new technologies. one promising technology is the development of fiber optic systems for voice and data transmission. eventually we will see a system of fiber optic systems being installed nationwide.

america's highways transport people and materials across the country. federal freeways connect with state highways which connect in turn with county roads and city streets. to transport data and ideas, we will need a telecommunications highway connecting users coast to coast, state to state, city to city. the study required in this amendment will identify the problems and opportunities the nation will face in establishing that highway.

Really? You been there?If it's so fucking nice, why did they have to use a secret place where no one can have any oversight? Why not use a prison on US soil? You fucking anonymous coward tightasses have no fucking clue, you're just knee-jerk dickwads who are so stupid you can't even tell when we're ALL getting our freedoms taken away. Fucking cocksucker.Liberal media? That's because the inevitable result of DOING THE FUCKING RESEARCH IS TO BECOME LIBERAL. Remember how we slashdotters say to RTFA? Well, thes

Gitmo is not illegal. What we are doing there, is. It violates every one of our laws and conventions that we have signed. But since few in the white house served and NONE have been to war, I am not surprised.

As to how we should be treating these people, well, they are POWs. They are not citizens, so they can not be tried as such. But they are soldiers and to say otherwise, is a lie. They should all be in a POW camp with the geneva convention being applied until the end of the war with bin ladin and the re

Bush never claimed the government developed the iPod. Slashdot boned this one, engadget boned this one. From TFA:"the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."Turns out the government decided to spend our money researching some technologies that happened to be useful in portable mp3 players. no more, no less.

Have you any idea how many people would have died if we invaded Japan? Do you know nothing about the Pacific Theater. Let me give you a quick synopsis...Japanese soldiers, highly trained and well equipped and wanting to die (a lot like Ira.* today, except for the well equipped part). The only way our guys on the ground could get the job done was to destroy EVERYTHING, generally by literally cooking the fanatical Japanese in their bunkers. Loss of life on our side was huge, on thiers it was nearly 100% (

Nice job mindlessly reciting the racist caricature put forth by the military propagandists. You duckspeak doubleplusgood.Now let me ask: How many real-life Japanese people do you actually know? I bet the answer is: "none". I, on the other hand, know quite a few, tourists and exchange students I've met, and immigrants and their descendants I've gotten to know long-term. (Admittedly, I may have an unfair advantage. I live in San Francisco now, and used to live in Honolulu.) And they are among the nices

Well, we may have a justifiable horror of chemical munitions, but it was never in question that Iraq had had them. The question was whether they still had them, in contravention to the agreement ending hostilities in the first Gulf War, and whether they were still developing new ones.

It's good that you remind us how bad the Baath regime was. But it shouldn't affect our view of the policies we're pursuing. It's also important not to "shift the goalposts" when evaluating the success of a policy. You have to judge it by its ostensible purpose, otherwise there's no accountability for failure. You might as well ask to be lead around like a pack of sheep.

There's no doubt that Hussein's regime, by any reasonable standard, was evil. But that wasn't the purpose of the war; nor was Iraq the only evil regime in the world, or even the worst regime. It was supposedly the most dangerous regime. The stated purpose of the war was to preempt the transfer of WMD to Al Qaeda. If you doubt this, check out this presidential speech [whitehouse.gov]:

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.

and

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

and

Failure to act would embolden other tyrants, allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources, and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events.

and finally:

We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world.

The speech even conjures up the "mushroom cloud" which was so in evidence in the run up to the war, and connects it to the 9/11 attacks.

Judged on its own terms then, the policy was a failure. None of the evidence that was cited has panned out; in fact it is now clear that much of it had already been disproven when it was cited at the time, the only question being whether the knowledge of this had reached the policy making levels of the Administration. Either way you answer the question, it's not a happy scenario.

It is posssible that Sadaam had a covert WMD program, which moved its stocks and equipment to a third country, Syria as some have suggested. It's not very likely in my opinion, but less likely things have happened in the past. I could spin a pluasible sounding scenario which would explain this unlikely event, although spinning is far from proving, as we're learning to our regret. But assuming that the WMD program was taken out of the country, then the policy was if anything a worse failure than if the weapons never existed. Because now we don't know where they are, and the most likely country doesn't just have tenuous ties to Al Qaeda: it keeps its own pet terrorist groups.

I'm not sure that Saddams regime was evil. From what I understand, other than a few cases where a hard line was taken against an assassination or a rebellion(or, of course, his famous culling of the political body when he took power), it looks very much like Saddam modernized and liberalized the country, and kept it more free than most countries in the reigon.Frankly, we're there now, and we're failing to control the same forces he had to deal with. His tactics may have been utterly brutal, but they appear

Too bad for Saddam that he decided to play chicken with the weapons inspectors instead of complying fully as he was required to do.

The "full compliance" demand was manufactured by the US administration as an excuse to invade Iraq.
According to Hans Blix (head of UN inspection teams) they complied well enough, not perfect, though. Moreover, much of the information the inspection teams was given from USA was very wrong or outright lies designed to provoke a reaction from the Iraqi government.

If he hadn't decided to bluff, then he might very well still be torturing his people to death in large numbers today.

Where Saddam stopped, USA continued, and committing many war crimes as well. Why do you think that USA is so hated by the general population in the Middle-East?

Their government, and following with that military. Oh, and corporations.

In all honesty I find the ratio of Americans I dislike to those I like is probably about the same as locals here, but I find their corporate practices (esp RIAA/MPAA/Sony/etc), military machine, and government policies/corruption detestable. But then again, so do many of the more educated Americans.

Well, while I'm sure it hasn't done much to endear them to the average man in the mosque, the USA was hated by people in the middle east well before any of their Iraqi adventures. The bigger fallout from the Iraq war has been the damage to America's standing amongst their allies and other friendly nations. Even if the USA is stronger, nobody likes a greedy lying bully.

Why do you think that USA is so hated by the general population in the Middle-East?

Because we are portrayed as the white, Christian west, the source of all the woe in the Middle East. Because we are the white devil. Because they have been rabble roused into hating us the same way we are continuously rabble roused into hating them. Because we side with Israel.

Because we have power. Because we are not afraid to use that power. Because we know embargoes and condemnations from the UN will NOT stop Ira

Why do you think that USA is so hated by the general population in the Middle-East?

Personally, I think it may have more to do with generations of religious zealotry breeding a general hatred of western culture, and cartel-like governments using that to control the population and secure their own power. Then again, we do pretty much the same thing in USA.

Personally, I think it may have more to do with generations of religious zealotry breeding a general hatred of western culture, and cartel-like governments using that to control the population and secure their own power. Then again, we do pretty much the same thing in USA.

USA has a long history of toppling democracies, crushing popular movements and installing/supporting dictatorships in the Middle-East and elsewhere.

These US policies are backlashing fairly often. The USA mostly created, trained and financed those very same groups they are hunting down in their so-called "war on terror". During the Soviet occupation of Afganistan, billons of dollars was poured into these networks. US specialists in terrorism, guerilla/urban warfare and insurgency trained what is to become their enemies.

USA through their puppet governments are crushing down hard on any popular movement for social improvement, democracy or worker rights. Socialists, union activist, academics or generally any on the left side are hunted down and prosecuted. What remains are radical religious movements that hardly stand for any social progress. Yet another backlash. A good example of this is Iran where the brutal US installed was toppled.

"While the United States did not supply full-fledged chemical weapons to Iraq, it did approve private business sales of biological weapon precursors to Iraq, according to a 1994 report issued by the US Senate Committee on Banking"

When will people understand that speaking in absolutist good & evil terms are never true and that it just makes people more hateful. We're all culprits to some degree.

Where Saddam stopped, USA continued, and committing many war crimes as well. Why do you think that USA is so hated by the general population in the Middle-East?

Partly because many of them think the US is a nation
full of Christians. I'm not saying that people who
live in countries in the Middle East are bad people
or hateful by nature, but keep in mind that we
are talking about countries which for the most part
are theocracies. All this stuff about freedom of
religion that we've developed in the Wes

According to a Foreign Affairs article [foreignaffairs.org], Saddam fell victim to his own bluff. One one hand, he was desperate to prove that he had complied with the requests to destroy any WMD; on the other hand, however, he still kept playing the WMD card in regional matters. When he finally did decide that it was time to quit bluffing and prove that he really didn't have a WMD program anymore, these steps were intrepreted as an attempt to cover up existing WMD.

Actually, the US politics are more people's business then you might realize as it impacts more people then just Americans.I mean if your family gets shot in the face by Americans -in your country, at your home!-, it becomes your business.When oil-prices skyrocket because your president feels he has to go murder some people, then it becomes your business, if your president doesn't feel like trying to do something at pollution -being the head of the country with the highest pollution rate- then it becomes everyone's business.

I can honestly say that you're pretty clueless on the issue
Oh look, here [cbsnews.com] is an article from 2005, 3 years after the "Axis of Evil" speech, talking about the youth movements in Iran. You've taken some very common facts, tossed in a name in a lame attempt to give your opinion some weight, then just started just making shit up. Bush and Ahmadinejad shooting their mouths off from across the globe really doesn't show any insight into what is really going on. I plead that you actually do some reading on the issu